Searchable Secret Santa

Simon Barnett has created a wonderful analysis tool for the new IPCC data.

click to go to search engine

Three days ago, when I announced the Secret Santa leak of nearly 1 gigabyte of internal Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documents, I remarked that it would be a marvelous thing if someone had the technical skills to make all of this material searchable online.

A good IT fairy named Simon Barnett has done just that – and I have been remiss in not sharing this information before now. The address to the search engine is here: http://SecretSanta.ntsa.org.uk/

There are two ways to use the search engine. If you haven’t downloaded the material already, everything can be done online. Type a keyword into the box, click Search, and the documents containing that word will appear in a list below. Clicking on one of these documents will open it. You’ll then need to use the search function embedded in your PDF reader to be taken to the exact location.

The second approach is faster and easier on bandwidth. The Secret Santa documents you’ve already downloaded just need to be grouped together in a single folder on your computer. Simon provides these helpful instructions:

Unzip all the files into a single folder on your local machine. Your folder should contain the following directories:

Select Off-line mode above and enter the path to the folder where you unzipped the files in the textbox. Searches will now generate links to the files on your computer in text boxes. For security reasons these links to your computer cannot be opened directly from the web page. You must copy the link into the address line of your browser to open the file from your local filing system.

To my knowledge, I’ve not met, spoken to, or e-mailed Simon before this week. We are strangers, on different sides of the Atlantic, but his volunteer labour will be of immense assistance to those of delving into this material.